From Shame to Fulfillment: The Power of Baby Steps

episode, I share three powerful things that allowed me to do something that I have been putting off for over a decade. This episode deep dives into how, even when there are things like massive emotional baggage, anxiety, fear and layers of shame, how we can still move through them and do the very thing that feels aligned for our system. I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to episode 84 of the Unweaving Chronic Pain Podcast. I am your host, dr Andrea Moore, founder of the whole self integration method, and I am on a mission to help people decode their pain, to unlock a life of radical alignment and authenticity, and one that is constantly opening up and expanding, not one that is shrinking due to pain. If you know anyone who could benefit from this work, please go ahead and share a link over to this podcast and give us a rating on Apple Podcast that helps others find us. And if you personally know that you could use support on your journey, do not hesitate to reach out and book an energy up level call. On that call, we are going to get so crystal clear on what the next best steps for you are on your healing journey that will help you move out of pain and into a life that has more ease, more energy, more flow, alignment and authenticity to it. To book that, the link is in the show notes or you can always reach out to me on Instagram at Dr Andrea Moore and just DM me energy up level. 

All right, let's get into today's episode. I'm recording this the day after Yom Kippur, which, if you're not aware of what that is, it is the holiest day in Judaism, but this episode really has nothing to do with religion and really nothing to do with Yom Kippur itself, although it brought up a lot of things, but I am going to allow some of that to simmer more before I make an episode about that. However, what I found, and the reason I wanted to talk about it, was because so many things happened leading up to yesterday that came together in a way that really just encompassed so much of what I have been working with and using my own tools, that I work with people because I practice what I preach and very much use my whole self integration method on myself, and it came together really beautifully yesterday. And so, even if you have no idea what Yom Kippur is, or, again, religious stuff makes you kind of like, oh, I don't want to listen to that. Don't worry, there's not going to be a lot about that, but it does bring in the first thing that I want to address. So one of the big things that people often struggle with, myself included is what is a true desire versus what is a desire that we think we should have or something that we're supposed to have or supposed to want, and this is one of the first things that I struggled with. 

So to back up and give a little backstory, so on Yom Kippur, many Jews will fast. That is one of the big pieces of the observance is fasting for 25 hours, including all water, all liquids, all food, and many today are even choosing to do a technology fast as well, and I think I fasted when I was in high school, but since then I have not done it, and that's been a long time ago, okay, and on top of that, many Jews will be going to services pretty much all day, and I have never done that because I didn't grow up where there was a Jewish congregation that was large enough to support that. I grew up very, very casually Jewish and we would maybe have some services in the evening, mainly so we could go then break the fast and eat food, but anyway. So the point is, I've never done a full Yom Kippur I started having every year for probably the past decade. It's come up of like oh I want to do something for, I want to do something for it and I've never made it happen. And it's come with a lot of like do I really want to do it or do I think I should want to do it Right? Especially because when it comes to something like religion, there is a lot loaded in there. My family wasn't super religious and they do not have those expectations of me. 

That being said, there has been a theme in my life where I really wanted to learn more but haven't made the effort to learn more. Or this is the big piece is I get really scared to learn more. A lot of shame has come up for me, and the more years that go by, the more shame I feel, because it feels like oh my gosh, here's another year where I haven't done anything, I haven't implemented anything, I haven't gone to temple, I haven't tried to learn anything, which means it's one more year I need to actually will have to show up a year older and be like I don't know what to expect here, and so this shame really mixed in, and for a while. For I think, you know, while this has been an inkling for quite some time, there's many years where I really shoved it aside because that shame was so strong, years easier to be like. Oh no, I just think I need to do this because you know I'm supposed to do it and I almost was able to spiritually bypass the desire to go to services by saying, you know, because it's like when I felt the shame, I was able to say, oh, it's not really a true desire, it's something that I think I'm supposed to do Right, like I was putting the shame on the wrong thing. But it turned out it really was the true desire all along and I just had layers of shame on top of it Because I just was scared to walk in and have no idea what to expect and to not know what was going on. And maybe you know I screw up or look stupid, not doing the right thing, or maybe everyone else shows up wearing something that I didn't get the memo about right. There were so many things that came up, but I've really been working hard on uncovering my true desires and working through shame and so really culminating this beautiful way that just happened to be around these services and this really holy day. 

So about a month ago I started realizing, ooh, yonka pours coming up, I don't want to miss it this year. And so I actually took the initiative to block off my calendar. And actually let me back up and say that's not even fully truthful, because first it took someone booking on that day for me to realize it was Yom Kippur and it would have been so easy, right. Then this is what has happened every year Someone books, I don't think about it, and then I don't want to move them. I feel guilty about it, it feels like too much effort. And so then I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'll just kind of half, you know, observe it, and then that just never happens at all. So when this person booked, I actually said, nope, I'm so sorry, I did not block that on my calendar yet. That was my bad, I'm going to have to move your appointment. And I blocked it for myself. So that was kind of like the start, like okay, I've taken this first step, I've just blocked the day off. 

And it was then, when that happened, that I really was truly able to touch into, like, yes, this is the true desire. This desire is real, right, because when I saw that person come on my schedule, I was like dang it. And I had that visceral gut reaction to it that really told me no, I really want to observe this. And this can be such a great way to tap into our desires. As often, you know, we brush them aside, we kind of override them, but sometimes we just get this big visceral reaction of which is such a solid yes or such a solid no that we can tap into. And that's what happened when that person booked. So I now knew this was a true desire, it was something I really wanted to do. I had nothing to do with feeling guilty about it. That was still there. There was still all this guilt and shame that was there. But I'm like I am. This is a true desire, right? 

And this comes to the second point. So first, being differentiating between a true desire or a should. Second, being often true desires or things that we want to do don't come in super clean, and by clean I mean without any baggage or other emotions. Sometimes they do. I haven't found that to be really true in my life, and a lot of my clients as well, is, often we have this true desire shine through and then floods in all kinds of layers of guilt or shame, or anger, or grief or something else entirely, and often then, when those things come up, that's when we tend to want to brush them aside. And so, for this in particular, this was a one day thing, right. This is like a desire, where it's like it's very cut and dry, of like here's this day that I'm going to choose to observe, and then the next day it's done. So it's a little easier, and so I want to like be very specific about that is how I approach. 

Different desires are different, based on that, and so what I'm talking about here I find to be much more applicable to something that's like this where that's like it's coming up, it's a date, it's a clear event and it has a clear end, right, Like. Maybe it's like someone invites you to go out to a networking event that feels like it's pushing your comfort zone, right. Clear date, clear event, clear thing that's happening. Or you have an interview, you have maybe a rock climbing event that someone invites you, right. Something that's like movement, like a movement class that's like here's this one class and that's this one time that you're going to show up and go to, or maybe it's something that you could choose to go to more right, but it has a clear start and end. I treat those very differently than something that's this more ongoing choice. 

And so really, in this episode, because this was a clear event, I'm going to speak to it as such, because when it comes to clear events, this might sound counterintuitive, but I'm actually less likely to do any deep inner work around it. I might. It depends because everything depends. But if I know I can kind of show up enough to like go to the thing, I'm probably going to do less inner work, because I find there's sometimes more value to doing inner work after the fact, or inner work kind of leading up to it as it so comes up, right, but if I can make the choice to do the thing, then a lot less inner work is often required. 

And so this was the case, for that is that I was able to be like I want to observe it, but I didn't know the how, I didn't know how much I was going to do, I didn't know if I was going to fast, right, and I was just like going to trust. I'm going to just work with this as it comes and so being able to just be with this whole array of guilt and shame and fear and anxiety about, oh my gosh, what to expect. Oh my gosh, if someone is someone going to like make fun of me for not knowing, because I have spent a massive amount of time and when I say massive I really mean massive Like over the past decade, building my emotional capacity to hold this discomfort. I really trusted my nervous system safety around, literally just being able to show up and not do any inner work. That would not have been the case three years ago. I would not have had that emotional capacity. So I do want to just again put that out there of like I have been doing this work to build up, holding a lot of intensity of emotions that can come up. That was not accessible to me a couple of years ago and that's where the nuance comes in of do you do inner work ahead of time or not. So if I, if that wasn't the case for me, if I felt like that anxiety or fear was going to get in the way or shame was going to get in the way and I didn't trust that I'd be able to show up. I would have done probably some inner work ahead of time to ensure that I was showing up for what I wanted to show up for. All right, so that's like thing. Number two is can you hold what comes up in response to the desire? And if not, it's okay, it's just acknowledging it is the first step and knowing that we can build our capacity to do that, and actually, in just inviting in the desire and being able to state it out loud and state the desire, we give ourselves the opportunity to see what is being presented as what, then we need to build up the capacity to be able to hold and be with. I think so often oh my goodness, it's such a. 

I fell into this trap for so long as I was hearing this message in the self-development world that if you have a desire or if something is aligned, it should feel so good and right that you should just be able to do it and there should be so much ease and it should just feel effortless to bring into your life. And that is the biggest load of bullshit ever. That belief was something that I believed for years and it is probably one of the biggest barriers that got in my way of living my life and opening up to my desires, because what happened is I would have a desire come in. It would feel like shit, and so I'd immediately be like, oh, this must not be a desire and I would just shove it aside. And I find it is so similar for so many women that I talked to, or so many people that I talked to not just women that this happens. They have the same beliefs. 

So just notice, if you have that, that like, oh, it should feel easy, it should feel good if it's aligned or if it's right. For me, not at all, can it. Yes, 100%. Are there things that feel amazing and good and effortless and flowy? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But chances are if it's something that is really meaningful and it is something that is requires you to step into a new identity, into up leveling who you are and letting go of a pattern that's no longer serving you. It will actually feel like shit to embrace a desire and there can be a lot of intensity to it and it can almost feel like, oh my gosh, this can't be the right thing, because it feels so uncomfortable. And that is where being able going back to point number one is being able to decipher between a true desire and a should is so essential. So then, the next thing, all right. Point number three is allowing for, maybe steps. 

This is one of the biggest gifts I have given myself in doing this work, and this was something that did not come easy at all. I don't know about you, but I have always found myself in the past to be someone where it's like, okay, my life is an entire fucking hot mess. Everything needs to change. So I'm going to make this big and plan that, starting tomorrow or starting next week, I'm going to wake up early and I'm going to have the perfect morning routine and I'm going to eat healthy and I'm going to exercise and I'm going to meditate and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, I'm going to let go of all these patterns that are no longer serving me. And then it never happens. 

And then I find myself in the exact same place, right, I don't even make it a day. I've never made it. Today. I have mad props to those who can like make it. Two weeks doing something like that. I don't think I would permit it. Like two hours doing that, yet I kept doing it. 

I cannot tell you how many big, audacious promises I made to myself that tomorrow would be the thing I would have, this big aha moment, this big realization of like, oh, here's, this pattern that I'm, you know, holding on to, it's gone. I don't want any more. It's gone. And then I wake up the next day and nothing would change. In fact, I would just beat myself up more because I still completely engaged in the pattern, and so this led to a lot of distrust with myself. This pattern has eroded massive trust in myself because it's been these promises that I have not been able to keep to myself, and I know I am not alone in this. And so allowing myself to let go of this perfectionism and do things really imperfectly and really small, the smallest baby steps, is something I've been practicing for, you know, the last year or two, and, oh my goodness, it's amazing how much spaciousness it has opened up in terms of less pressure on myself and just easing my own system. I'm not so tense all the time when I'm feeling all that pressure, but ironically, it's actually allowed me to do more and, looking back, change more habits and patterns than I ever was able to shift when I was trying to change it all at the same time, so I applied the same concept to this. 

So when I originally looked at the Yom Kippur services, it is like 930, 130, 230, 330, 330 or something like that. Whatever there's, there's a shit ton of services. Okay, and like I'm not kidding, when I said it's an all day thing, and I looked at that and I got really overwhelmed. I was like, oh, my god, that's too much. And I went into kind of like anxiety mode of like how am I going to be able to handle that? Am I going to be able to handle that? What's that going to be like? Am I supposed to go to all of them? Like I just totally spiraled about it for like a few hours and it brought in another pattern. 

That is one that is just such a funny pattern that I have is like I have such a thing about putting stuff on my calendar. I mean I'm fine with like appointments on my calendar. Like you see, you know you schedule something with me. Like I need that on my calendar. That's totally great. Doctor's appointments absolutely need to be on my calendar, all that. 

But outside events, things that I'm like not 100% committed to, I like go into. Like I would love to know if somebody else has this, please make me feel not so alone in this. I will go into like total nervous system freak out about putting something on my calendar. Anyways, had to, went into a total nervous system spiral about needing to put this on my calendar, and so I actually made it a commitment to myself that I would actually put the things on my calendar. This was like the first baby step that I asked myself of, like just choose and put it on your calendar, which sounds really silly and really small, but for my nervous system it is a big freaking deal. 

After a little existential turmoil in my head, I finally sat my butt down on my computer and brought both things up, and I'm not joking when I say it probably took me 45 minutes of staring at this and then maybe googling some of the names of the service and having an existential crisis in my head about random things. But I finally put some things on my calendar, and so I put just some afternoon services on my calendar. I decided I would just do from the 130 on, and I did it though. All right, did it need to take 45 minutes? Absolutely not. Did it take me 45 minutes? If not, more honestly, I didn't time it? Yes, 100%. That is where I was in that moment. Do I now trust that next year will be a whole lot quicker? Yeah, 100%. It'll probably take me two minutes next year because now I know I'll probably just do it all again. Anyways, but I allowed myself to just do the afternoon. 

It was like first baby step was just deciding to put it on my calendar. Second baby step putting it on my calendar, and then I just like let that be. And now we're like two weeks out from this point at this point, and it's not something I was like thinking about that much, but it would come up every now and then and and I really want to Just give yourself permission to see where something that sounds really silly is using up a lot of mental energy, because I think I can even feel myself hesitating to share how much mental energy this decision took because I'm like it sounds so ridiculous. Right, I'm sure you, like everyone listening, is like seriously like why? Why did this take so much mental energy? It did it's because there's layers of shame and guilt and all kinds of other layers that I'm not even bringing in here that like come into even me practicing Judaism and turning back towards it. So it's like it sounds small, but there's so many nervous system things that come Behind it. 

So, as just a very quick backstory, if you've been listening for some time, you may have heard me talk about it, but I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors and though my grandparents survived, everyone took a different interpretation of their survival, and my grandparents interpretation was why would we practice Judaism With a God that did this to us like it was a very much turning their backs on their religion? So my parents grew up or my dad, because in my dad someone who's Jewish grew up with basically zero exposure Like at all to Judaism. My grandparents didn't like Ever deny being Jewish or ever try to change being Jewish. Interestingly enough, had you asked them, they would have said they were Jewish 100%. There was no denial of it or no attempts to, I guess, get rid of that. It was. They just did not carry it on. And so my dad grew up knowing nothing about Judaism, and it was actually my mom, even though she's not the Jewish one, who Kind of brought it back in and decided that she wanted to raise us Jewish, and so we kind of like were this Reclamation generation in a way, but we still grew up, like I said very casually, jewish, and so this turning towards this reclamation of it in my lineage is it holds a lot in my system. We'll just leave it at that. 

I could go on about this. So, anyways, this is important. I want to bring this in because sometimes there's these decisions that feel so Silly. Through this, all I was aware of how ridiculous it would be if I was like telling someone about this, of like I'm having an existential crisis about putting a service on my calendar, right, but in my nervous system was a really, really big deal, and just being able to like, say it out loud and own it and see it for what it is is really the first step to working with it, because sometimes we're so hard on ourselves for things like that that are a big deal to our nervous system that we kind of logically know Shouldn't be a big deal, or it maybe isn't a deal a big deal to most people, who doesn't activate most most people's nervous system, and so then we just we layer on more shame, right, and so I think one of the big things here was that I actually just like allowed myself to be in it all and to like have the bigness of it all until, like, allow the big nervous system reaction and to not shame myself was huge and and have it in a way where I was using my tools and working within, holding it. It wasn't getting away from me. I guess. I wasn't like letting it spiral into something that was unsupportive, it was actually just letting it be really big while I was still a third-party Observer to it. So, anyways, we're trying my baby steps. 

There's a little bit of a tangent there, but these so as the weeks went by and like as I'm kind of thinking about in my head, I was like I really want to fast. That felt really important. I really wanted to try it out. I wasn't not convinced about the whole water and coffee thing and I wasn't convinced how I would do a whole day without food. So I was like you know what, I'm gonna do my best, I'm gonna let myself drink water. I love myself drink coffee and I will bring a snack with me and I will just allow myself to eat if I need to eat, like no big deal. And so that was that. It was just like okay, and then. So everything kind of settled after. 

I made those decisions again, slowly, over time, little baby steps, and then night before I was like you know what? No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the full fast. I'm gonna let myself have water though that will never change, that still felt very Significant to be able to have water. But I was like no coffee, no food, and I'm gonna do the whole day. I'm. So why not? Why wouldn't I do the whole day? What else am I gonna do? Otherwise? I'll just be at home, probably wanting to eat food and Wanting to work. 

That was the other big things. I did not want to work at all. I wanted to completely not answer any emails, not See any clients, not, you know, answer client messages or anything like that. I really wanted to have more technology fast as well, and so I just Naturally fell into that decision the night before. It was not something I pressured myself to do, it just Happened. And then I ended up doing it all. 

So the next day I went, I stayed all day at services, I fasted the whole day. I did have water, I didn't even try to not have water and, yeah, it went great, and I even had an opportunity to share in a meditation where we were all sharing about what the High Holidays meant to us the shame I had For this being my first young kippur and for that quite knowing what to expect, and that felt so healing to share that in this community that I'm really new to, and it was welcomed with so much love and so much kindness and compassion and I felt so welcome there. So that was just so beautifully healing. But what this is really about is again what I have noticed for myself and so many of my clients have experienced the same thing is when we drop the perfectionism, when we open to our true desires and start taking the baby steps of action to get there, things snowball faster than we often Realize they will, and that snowball faster than if we try to force them. 

So, for example, if when I had the desire to celebrate Yom Kippur, when I had the desire to observe Yom Kippur, if I had put the pressure on myself to do the full fast and to go all day Services, I know from the past decade of trying to do this to myself that I would have done the same thing that I had done the last ten years is do nothing for it. As To, it felt too overwhelming, too big, it would have gotten away from me, I would have casually forgotten quote-unquote, subconsciously to block my calendar, or I would have just allowed that person to book and then allowed somebody else to book, and then you know Not shared with my clients that I wasn't gonna be answering messages, things like that, and the day would have gotten away from me. But because I allowed myself to have the baby steps, to have the shame, to have the guilt, to have the fear, to have the anxiety about it and to let that all actually just be, it ended up being the exact thing that I had so desired, which I would have never thought to be possible, and it's just so interesting how this happens. I have so many other examples in my own life. None are just as clear and clean as this example, which is why I'm using it, just because it's such a clear, like event thing that when I step back, take the pressure off myself, allow imperfect baby steps, things just open up and unfold, and often unfold at so much faster of a pace than when I was trying to force them. 

The same is true for pain. The same is true for anxiety and fears in themselves, or any deep emotions that we hold onto so often the fear of the thing itself, or the fear that it feels so big or so overwhelming, or that we have to do it right, becomes the very thing that just gets in the way of the experience itself, of the emotional processing itself of the event that we want to attend in itself, of putting our voice out there in the way that we want, whatever it might be. And when this happens, all these layers of blocking what we truly want, what truly needs to come out, what truly needs to be expressed, often are the very things that create pain in our bodies, pain in our nervous system, pain and anxiety that we hold onto. All of that just amplifies and spirals almost out of control. We're so hard on ourselves and think things should look a certain way and be a certain way that when they aren't that way, all we do is add more layers of shame and guilt on top of it, and those again just become the very thing that block us from doing the very thing we want, from tapping into our desires and so bringing this full circle back to the desire in itself. 

What is your desire? I remember being in Dr Valerie Raines' mentorship and she would ask us this question what is your desire? She would ask it all the time, and it would always bring up so much tension in my system, because just the very act of trying to speak my desires out loud felt so unsafe. Just to be able to speak them, to see them in my mind's eye, to admit them, was such a threat for my system. So I want to invite you to play with this very question that she would ask what is your desire? Can you start there? Can you first admit to yourself out loud if you can, it could just be out loud to yourself though no one else has to be there what your desires are, and I'm going to throw this in here being out of pain is not a desire. You can want to be out of pain. Of course it's not a desire, though in this sense, it's not something you can move towards. Being out of pain is something you're trying to run away from or you're moving away from. So I want to invite you what is your desire? 

As if and in a way, to play with this and if you want to use pain as a gauge here is if your pain was no longer here, what would you do with your time? What would you do with your day? What would be different about your day? What would open up because pain is no longer getting in the way of you living your life? What would you move towards? Those are your desires and often, I know, for so many people I talk to you and again this was me it's so hard to even know or to even imagine what life would be like without pain. So but allow yourself, you know, everybody knows, I knew deep down, I just didn't want to say it to myself, I couldn't find it internally because it just felt too scary to say. But allow yourself to explore what are my desires. What would shift if pain was not a limiting factor in my life, if anxiety wasn't a limiting factor, if whatever emotional pain you're holding onto was no longer a limiting factor? 

What is your desire? And if you're able to identify it and this can be something really big or something tiny I feel like desiring to go to Yom Kippur services was not a huge desire, right? It's not some like big life long thing. This was one day, it was just one day, right? So if something going, something really big, feels way too overwhelming, don't go big, go small, go to like hey, I just want to go to this one concert, I want to go to this one event. I want to go out to this one restaurant that just sounds delicious, right, like? What desire can you tap into? Is accessible now, and if you do have a big one, awesome too. And then what are your next baby steps to making it happen? 

Maybe it's something like the restaurant one that you're like, oh, I could just go literally do that tonight, and you can just or Friday night, you know make it a date night, whatever it wants to be, and it's like you can just go do it. There's not even baby steps to do it, it's just allowing yourself to book the reservation and then you get to go. Or maybe, like me, something that seems small, like that does bring up a whole lot of nervous system turmoil, but you work within anyways, and that's totally cool as well, right? Or maybe it's something bigger that requires a lot of baby steps, a lot of allowing yourself to be imperfect along the way, allowing yourself to screw up, to get it wrong, to do it wrong. But what is the next baby step action you can take to move towards it? And I'd love for you to reflect on this, and if this is something that you have trouble identifying, or if you're like me, we're just even identifying a desire brought up so much intensity in your system that it's not something you can feel like you can hold on your own, or if, taking the next action, it feels like it just brings up so much that it shuts you down. This is where reaching out for support is the greatest gift you can give yourself. That's what I did for myself. 

Allowing yourself to have support along this journey is so incredibly powerful and often is an act of healing in itself, because it is showing your nervous system it doesn't need to do it alone. Our nervous systems were never meant to do this type of work alone. We are social beings. We heal in community. It is why I have my pain to power community, a group where so much healing happens just by witnessing each other and just by allowing your desires to be heard. Allowing your struggles to be heard, allowing your stuck points to be witnessed with so much love and compassion, is the healing. It actually makes things a whole lot easier when you have this type of community healing. That happens. 

So if you want to hear more or if you want personalized support, that is something that I absolutely offer, and I'm really, really a stickler about figuring out what is right for your nervous system at the phase you're in, because my pain to power community is not for everybody. I can't say it's for you because I don't know who you are listening right now. I would love to get to know you, though I will never tell someone it's right for them if it's not. But the only way to know that is to know and learn more about what you're currently experiencing, what your goals are and, more importantly, where your nervous system is right now. Sometimes one-on-one work is more appropriate. Sometimes another type of work altogether is exactly what I'll recommend to people that has nothing to do with working with me if I feel like that's what's most supportive for their nervous systems right and their goals. 

So if you want to get really laser focused on what is your next step, then book an energy up level call On that call. Together we will work through what is going on for you, for your nervous system at the phase of life you are in, and I help identify what the next best step for you is to opening up more ease, more flow, more ability to access your desires, which means more joy and more alignment in life and getting to just wake up and do the things that feel really good on that day for you. The link for that is in the show notes. Just DM me a message on Instagram that says energy up level and I will send you a link to book that call. And if you're so open to sharing, I would love to hear what came up for you on this episode. Let me know what your desire is. Again, just DM me on Instagram. Be like I listened to this episode. Here's what came up for me. 

I love to hear from my listeners. I love to hear how things resonated, and if there's anything that you would love me to cover on this podcast, please don't hesitate to reach out as well. As always, instagram is the best way to contact me, but you can also contact me through the contact form on my website. Dr Andrea Moorecom. As always, thank you so so much. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page